The Ambush at Kartyg
The Ambush at Kartyg was a battle fought on the Day of Revelation, in which the Berserkers of Uran announced their commitment to the Insurrectionist side with an attack on the Crimson Lions. Events Kartyg was the purest ambush of the Day of Revelation, fought as it was between Legions who cordially detested one another. Even as allies in the Great Crusade, Crimson Lions and the Berserkers of Uran could not be trusted to fight together, and it is likely that Raktra Akarro demanded the chance to slay Hectarion as the price of his entry into the war. The Berserkers laid their trap on a world close to the war front where the IIIrd Legion was currently campaigning. Kartyg was a mining world in the northern reaches of Segmentum , recently brought to compliance and only lightly garrisoned. Its governor deferred instantly to the authority of a Primarch, especially one with Raktra’s monstrous reputation. With that, it was the work of a few short hours to butcher the garrison and enslave the population. Then the VIIth Legion sent out a falsified distress signal through Kartyg’s terrified and bewildered astropaths, dug in, and waited. Hectarion arrived with the main strength of his Legion and a collection of Army fleets which had happened to be in the region, believing that a xenos force of unknown nature and alarming strength was loose behind Imperial lines. He found a world apparently stripped bare, its fortresses gutted. The Lions’ advance forces made planetfall, seeking survivors or lingering enemies in the cities. As they delved into the subterranean levels, further Brotherhoods - as the Lions named their companies - penetrated the mines, and in the depths they found the enemy. The Berserkers had set mortal troops, feral and death worlders utterly in thrall to the Ashen King, in the upper levels of the mines and the under-cities. The face of the enemy apparently revealed as human but non-Imperial, the Lions attacked in greater strength. Now the Berserkers showed their bloodstained hand, companies storming up from the deepest reaches with Titans and Knight walkers lumbering in their wake. Equipped to engage a mortal horde, the Lions had their lines torn asunder, their tanks blasted and shredded by the Berserkers’ war machines. Even as the true face of the enemy became clear, the VIIth Legion fleet emerged from the shadow of the system’s second, uninhabited world and from high above the solar plain. With naked malice, they fell upon the IIIrd Legion fleet. The Lions’ fleet did not suffer as greatly as those of the Iron Bears and the Scions Hospitalier, as they were arrayed for battle, but on the surface their forces were ripped apart, trampled under the pitiless feet of the Legio Yharma. The Lions mounted a desperate series of evacuation attempts with their gunship wings, but such was intensity of the VIIth Legion attack that only a fraction of these craft returned to the void, bringing Lions to relative safety. Hundreds of craft fell prey to fire from the surface or Insurrectionist fighters and interceptors, spiralling to earth in flames. Even the thickly armoured bulk landers of the Army came apart, shattered by Titan cannons before they could flee. As Raktra’s flagship approached, Hectarion held the IIIrd Legion fleet together, his tactical sense warring with his duty to his sons and outrage at his brother’s crime. It took the intervention of his lieutenants, Vericos and Hastein Iron-Arm, to dissuade him from confronting Raktra directly. They had received astropathic missives from nearby worlds, and realised that the Berserkers’ actions were part of a greater whole. The Lions would serve no one by standing and dying in this backwater. They had to escape with what strength they could, and learn of the war’s true extent. The Lupa Sanguis led the Lions’ surviving vessels in their breakout from the system, but even with Hectarion swayed, their escape was hardly certain. Only the unexpected number of Army ships, which outnumbered those of the IIIrd, had delayed the destruction of the fleet, the Auxilia fleetmasters advancing courageously into the teeth of the enemy to buy time for the Emperor’s son. At the system’s edge the Hooded Guillotine, the Berserkers’ menacing flagship, caught up to its sister ship. Here Hectarion would likely have met his end but for the bravery of Rix Thegnir Hralssen, who commanded the strike cruiser Draugren. Peeling off from the formation, Hralssen had his ship ram the Hooded Guillotine, firing all the while as it shot towards the leviathan. Its assault craft hastily scrambled, the Draugren ploughed through a cluster of the Gloriana’s spinal towers, inflicting grave damage on itself to knock its target off course. Stunned momentarily by the daring ploy, Raktra's favoured companies were beset by boarding attacks by those gunships and assault rams which had reached the Hooded Guillotine. Wounded by Hralssen’s act and beset by attackers within, the baleful ship left its lessers to pursue Hectarion. Hralssen paid for his bravery at the hand of Raktra himself when the Draugren was boarded in its turn. Hectarion escaped with roughly two thirds of his fleet, but less than that proportion of the warriors he had brought with him. Some fourteen thousand lay dead on Kartyg or floated in the void above, along with hundreds of thousands of Army troops, the regiments shattered by the ravenous violence of the Berserkers. The Lions learned of Icarion's treachery soon afterwards, hastening back towards Loyalist territory and swearing grim oaths of vengeance upon the Insurrectionists. Category:Battle Category:Day of Revelation